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Report: #555692

Complaint Review: Verizon - Verizon Wireless - New York New York

  • Submitted:
  • Updated:
  • Reported By: Raven S — Sidney Montana United States of America
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  • Verizon - Verizon Wireless 140 West Street New York, New York United States of America

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Verizon Wireless refuse to tell me how to secure my wireless modem so that other people can't use it to access our computer and internet connection. I have asked them several times and they say that it is impossible for anyone else to access our modem.


They are obviously lying because I have over 200 static IPs on my ARP reading this very moment. I have told them this happens and they still say it's impossible...


If it was impossible it would not be happening. Not only do they not know the defintion of the word "Impossible", They don't know what an integrated modem is, which is what I have. The last person I talked to didn't know what an ARP reading was and I tried to explain to him what that and what an integrated modem were, niether of which he understood and he was defiant the whole time about the existence of these two things!


OK, I can forgive anyone else who reads this for not knowing these things, but not the techs of an ISP.


An integrated modem is one that has a built-in wireless access point that can be used by anyone and everyone within its range to access the internet or the computer that it is attached to. Without it being encryped and configured to only authentcate the desired IPs, they will accept all of them. 


As a result, we are getting every "Tom, d**k, and Harry - and their uncles" using our bandwidth and connedcting to our computer as well, and instead of being greatul, the dirty creeps do as much damage as possible and are as aggravating as they can be. They take our user rights, slow down our service and block us from being able to do many things including even using our own printer! Not to mention, we have to pay extra so that we can still get service.


We're tired of it and we want to do something about it. 

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 01/16/2010 08:40 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/verizon-verizon-wireless/new-york-new-york-10007/verizon-verizon-wireless-verizon-refuse-to-tell-customers-how-to-secure-their-wireless-555692. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
3Author
3Consumer
0Employee/Owner

#6 Author of original report

Lady, you've really got it wrong!

AUTHOR: Raven S - (United States of America)

POSTED: Friday, January 29, 2010

<<<How is this a "ripoff"?

Slideback on getting spmewhere with Verizon. I've just been emailed that I need to start my process over by calling the same helpline number as I called at the start and could get no help from...

and I have answered the woman who was first to comment on my complaint. I didn't think her snotty post was worth answering but that has now changed. 

I saw a comment by her with the same title where she insulted someone who had worse problems with Verizon than I do. 

Claudia Balzac - Pittsville (USA)

SUBMITTED: Saturday, January 23, 2010

POSTED: Saturday, January 23, 2010

> You ordered a service, and by your own admission, you received the service you paid for.

I never said I had recieved the the service that I had ordered. I ordered an internet service like what everyone else has, (including you)

I did not order an internet service that included letting other people invade my connection, and use up our whole month's subscription allowance within 2 hrs on the date of renewal.

I did not order an internet service that included access for anyone who wanted it to my own computer files

as well as allowing anyone who had the inclination, to be able to damage to my system and change and rearrange eveything I do with my settings...

Including turning off and reconfiguring my Firewall and Anti-virus, etc...

>It's .not their responsibility to walk you through setting up every aspect of securing your >connection. That's up to you.

It is their responcibility if the equipment is furnished by themselves and it does not perform up to the standard that they claim it does. They do not put in their adverts the fact that it's an integrated modem and that as such it may therefore pick up unnexpected wireless router signals and then be taken advantage of by the owners or users thereof. If I had known it was an integrated modem after all the trouble I've had with Mid Rivers's and HughesNet's I would have sought an alternative.

>If you can't figure it out with the help you've gotten for free,

Where did I say I had gotten any help for free?

Support service for problems from an ISP for problems you may have with products they furnish you with should be free, but so far I've never recieved any of that. Asked for their help many times but never got any. Hence the complaint I've submitted here.

>try hiring someone who knows what they're doing.

Been there, did that - for 4 years. The local PC techs were happy to reformat and install a security software but refused to do anything more than that. I was just a cash flow to them. Our hackers are not just kids playing around or whoever either. They are profesionals. And that's not even half of it!

>There's numerous ports that will be opened, legitimately, when a connection is active.

You act like I'M stupid, you are refering to a netstat reading. I am refering to an Address Resolution Protocol reading, which should only be computers in YOUR local LAN. If you aren't in a LAN, you should have only YOU listed and no one else. Your modem or router should hold everyone else off.

>If you're using the Windows networking protocols, try following the directions to set up a >key for authentication. It's not rocket science. And it's not the company's fault you can't figure >out what to do,

ALL

of my own configurations get overridden by the person or people who hijack my computer. I correct it, they do it again. I correct it, they do it again. I correct it, they do it again.

same with my sec. software, and I have used the best of them.

>when there's a ton of online help guides and so on.

Hey, that would have been great, if I hadn't been blocked from communicating with any of them by the hackers for 4 years.

>Fifty million other users have figured it out, so can you. Probably.

Fifty million people have the type of service you obviously have. If you actually know fifty million people who have been abused the way we have and figured out how to get rid their hackers, here is my phone number: (406) 482 9020

Please give it to all of them - I would really appreciate some pointers!

Thank them in advance for me...

************************************************************

router problem ?

Doc - Healdsburg (U.S.A.)

SUBMITTED: Saturday, January 23, 2010

POSTED: Saturday, January 23, 2010

It sounds like the problem is with your ROUTER not being locked down with a password or WEP or WPA key. Your compute is then sharing the connection with others.

That's because I'm hooked up on someone else's wireless router and I don't know who's LAN I'm being forced to stay on by Verizon refusing to help me secure my Verizon modem.

Reset your Router

Knighttrain30 - Camp Springs (USA)

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#5 Author of original report

Reply to Doc Hearldsburg & Knighttrain30

AUTHOR: Raven S - (United States of America)

POSTED: Monday, January 25, 2010

Thanx Guys...

router problem ?

Doc - Healdsburg (U.S.A.)

SUBMITTED: Saturday, January 23, 2010 POSTED: Saturday, January 23, 2010

It sounds like the problem is with your ROUTER not being locked down with a password or WEP or WPA key. Your compute is then sharing the connection with others.

Reply to Doc - Hearaldsburg:

I have been trying to get that through to ISPs and our local techs for 5 years. Any Modem with a built-in router or access point is hackable if it's not configured right.

Especially if you have signals from 2 wireless routers that are not yours overlapping in your living room and that's where your computer is.

Mid Rivers Communications didn't care about that, Hughes Net Systems didn't care about that, and now Verizon didn't care about that - but there's hope with Verizon. They seem nicer. Here's the whole story:

Mid Rivers Communications, HughesNet and it seems Verizon may as well, provide an integrated modem for their customers. An integrated modem has a built-in wireless router or access point. That's OK if you are not in an area or situation where there is a dishonest person or group who have malicious intentions and who think it's fun to torment someone.

I believe that they do this to increase their coverage areas without the expense it would take to buy and set up additional routers, switches, hubs or whatever it would take if they did not have the option of using their customers as local servers. We get notices from Verizon that we can increase our coverage area, but who'd want to? 

When I discovered the Motorola Surfboard was able to allow local wireless connections I asked how to turn this option off. They wouldn't let me. MRs tried telling me the router IPs I was seeing logs were mine.

All 4 of them.

Even though we didn't have 1.

(We also had war drivers on our logs who would park in front of our house. This has stopped since we got Verizon so the signal must be weeker)

Instead of doing anything about our hacking problems MRs insisted nothing was happening. Even when shown screenshots of everything. The Head Tech said he couldn't tell anything because he didn't know much about Norton. Yeah, right.

I told them that we were not even able to keep our security software turned on or configured the way we wanted it. We thought that was hackers too. They weren't even concerned about that. That should have been my first clue.

Mid Rivers had us directly connected to an access point with at least 3 other computers (or NAT routers) I begged them countless times to find out which of the IPs belonged to the people who were hacking us and block them from our computer. They could have done this easily, because all of the IPs that were accessing our computer were MRs customers and all MRs customers have static IPs.

The networking device, which belonged to MRs was

00-0D-66-25-4C-01

The connected IPs were:

64.89.218.1 (Ours)

72.250.136.1,

72.250.139.1,

216.228.50.1.

The latter being the IP address of the device the MAC belongs to. I found all of this info when trying to convince MRs that we were being hacked and I was still under the illusion that they actually didn't know about it and that they would do something if they did. Turned out they did know.

We switched to HughesNet. I said I wanted to be set up with broadcasting off and no wireless access on. I said we only had 1 computer and we didn't need that. I told them we had been hacked by wireless means in the past.

It is possible to run a cable directly from the back of the computer, through the modem and straight to the satellitye dish. That's what I told them to do. He hooked up the cable but left it "not implemented" He left the wireless access and broadcasting on.

The hacker changed their IPs to HNs

The HN9000 does not seem to be one that you CAN turn those things off with. In fact, on the back of the modem it says in very tiny lettering:

"...This device must accept all interference, including any interference which may cause undesired operation"

Which, in other words, means it is supposed to be used as a server with or without the consent of it's owner.

I asked for one you could change but to no avail. I learned after leaving HN that if we would have been allowed to use our own firewall software installed on our computer, and keep it configured to keep out traffic from outside, they could not have used us as a server. The firewall on the "Server" PC must be disabled to keep traffic flowing through. Every time I reconfigured it, it would be overridden and go back to how it was.

This may be a common practice with ISPs. I don't know. Personally, I think if it is, it should be illegal to do it without the customer's knowledge and PERMISSION.

I am happy to provide proof of what I've just stated including the IPs we were hooked up with with HN and more.

Oh, yeah, how did I learn from HN about the Firewall & Server thing?

In a moment of great exasperation, after months of trying myself, I asked my Mother to try to talk to them about doing something about the hacking and she did. She has a speaker phone and I listened.

When she asked someone who went by the name of Jimmy, and would not disclose his surname why they wouldn't do anything about me being hacked, he said I wasn't.

She said, "She is being hacked"

and she went down the list of symptoms. When she got to the part where

"...someone even keeps turning off her firewalls!"

he stated that it was HughesNet's firewall disabling mine!

"Why would you be turning off her firewalls!?"

Because ours is suficient"

"Well, it's not sufficient if she's getting hacked!"

"She isn't getting hacked"

"Yes she is getting hacked - and how do you expect her to not get hacked if you turn off her firewalls?"

"She can't get hacked. The modem is unhackable"

That day I went home and cancelled our subsription. I sent the bank a packetfull of evidence that proved we had been being used as a server and got HN to give us back $900.00 and waive the $700.00 early cancellation fee - on the grounds of breech of contract.

Reset your Router

Knighttrain30 - Camp Springs (USA)

SUBMITTED: Sunday, January 24, 2010 POSTED: Sunday, January 24, 2010

Reset your Router and make a new Strong password. Are you can make it static ip. As far as your computer. Delete the quest

account. Turn off your wireless when you are not using it.

I tried a router once, and all it did was join in the family, with the others. It did not keep anyone out - maybe because a router's job is to block IPs from the internet, not the local network - a network that I don't even want to be part of. But if one looks back and considers the fact that the person who helped me set up the router knew the passwords, my IP, and the MAC address on my computer was the same person who had known very well who I was connected to and wouldn't do anything about it, (MRs Head Tech) that's not surprising.

Now that we have Verizon the hackers have changed to it also.

The constants are the IPs on the ARP readings. They never change. The IPs change, but not the MACS. Not to mention there should only be one IP on it (ours) and there are up to 200 or more.

That's why I want to set my modem to block any but MY IP and make it static. Maybe I can bypass the local routers I'm getting caught on by specifying a route to the gateway. I don't know about that sort of stuff. I'm new at this and I'm only learning it because I couldn't get any help with it from local techs (who don't know how, or just liked the steady flow of reformat - reinstall fees) or obviously the ISPs.

I've tried passwords as well, to no avail. We have them now, but our hacker (s?) is smarter. I disabled the "GUEST" account. I can't find an option for deleting it. I will work on that. We turn off the modem when we're not using it and when we turn it back on they make up for lost time.

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#4 General Comment

Reset your Router

AUTHOR: Knighttrain30 - (USA)

POSTED: Sunday, January 24, 2010

Reset your Router and make a new Strong password. Are you can make it static ip. As far as your computer. Delete the quest account. Turn off your wireless when you are not using it.

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#3 Author of original report

Update on Verizon customer support status and answer to comment

AUTHOR: Raven S - (United States of America)

POSTED: Sunday, January 24, 2010

Hi,

First I will happily state that I think I have got Verizon's attention via another email, and it looks as if something may get done about my hacking problem. I'm not jumping up and down yet, but am encouraged.

Someone answered my last letter to them and said they are going to turn it over to the Networking Engineers' department. I have been asking to speak with someone in that department all along. 

I know it is a curable problem and am very pleased with the prospective future. I will update here, what happens next week...

I am also sending in some pics of log-ons that I have been able to compare with Belarc and can prove to sceptics here, that we are not alone. I call our hacker "Uninvited Guest" because he calls himself "Guest" to fool people into thinking he's just the built-in system account called "Guest"

This ploy has worked on many people. That's why one of the pics is of the user accounts and plainly shows that our "Guest" account is turned OFF. All of the audit programs I have confim this.

 

 

 

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#2 Consumer Suggestion

router problem ?

AUTHOR: Doc - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Saturday, January 23, 2010

It sounds like the problem is with your ROUTER not being locked down with a password or WEP or WPA key. Your compute is then sharing the connection with others.

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#1 Consumer Comment

How is this a "ripoff"?

AUTHOR: Claudia Balzac - (USA)

POSTED: Saturday, January 23, 2010

You ordered a service, and by your own admission, you received the service you paid for. It's not their responsibility to walk you through setting up every aspect of securing your connection. That's up to you. If you can't figure it out with the help you've gotten for free, try hiring someone who knows what they're doing. There's numerous ports that will be opened, legitimately, when a connection is active.

If you're using the Windows networking protocols, try following the directions to set up a key for authentication. It's not rocket science. And it's not the company's fault you can't figure out what to do, when there's a ton of online help guides and so on. Fifty million other users have figured it out, so can you. Probably.




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